MRI Go Round

(weird tunnel vision)

I have a spine. Science says so. Of course, it could be a giant hoax on the lines of the moon-landing, the earth-rounding, the atom-bombing, the Titanic-drowning or it could be a there-is-no-spine illusion/delusion (btw, there are giants, aren’t there?). But I’ll go with science at least till I go senile.

I had an MRI scan done on my spine earlier this week after a nudge from a doctor. Even that metaphoric nudge set pain bells ringing. So to the MRI go round I went. Have you ever been on that ride? I hope you never have to; not necessarily for the experience that it is but for the reasons that necessitate the scan. I don’t do drugs. I don’t need to; my mind is spectacularly imaginative and colourful (it’s only my t-shirts that are black). Even so, a 45-50 minute stint in this machine is a trip even if your mind is only as colourful as any shade of grey. But before you get into that House of Scans, you need to strip yourself of metal. Nope, even my Gutslit t-shirt didn’t make it. Oddly enough my gold ring was allowed. Gold always wins, so sucks to you, plantingum! I didn’t question the exemption because removing that ring would have meant detaching the finger it was attached to. Yeah, fat fingers, nearly twenty-three years of marriage, and the one ring is yours forever. Once you’re in the white room (nope, no curtains black or otherwise) if you are a curious wanderer like I am, curb your enthusiasm. You’re in the presence of a powerful force, a magnet that you don’t want to get stuck to coz it’s too heavy to walk around with. Oh! MRI = Magnetic Resonance Imaging. But, but, but if you’ve already laid down your metal? Gold is a temptation that brooks only so much resistance and the ring, you all know the power of the ring. Right then. I lay on a tray like the pièce de résistance at a feast table even if I’m not dishy. And the dressing is a blanket. The room is cold. Ah! so I was dessert! The nice technician pushed buttons and I moved into the narrow tunnel, or the wide gullet of the beast depending on how you feel about it. I say nice technician because he didn’t tell me anything other than that it would take about 45 minutes of going immobile (The Who starts playing in my head). While he went about setting things up in the adjoining console room, I had a woke-up call: this machine is diabolically designed as a tool of fat-shaming! I had to pretend being an X-man and keep my arms crossed over my chest (should thorax be a better term here?) coz if I kept them to the side, I wouldn’t fit. Any one of Nero Wolfe’s proportions or endowed with a 56-inch chest would meet a you-shall-not-pass. (R for Resistance). It was quiet for a few minutes and then the stillness of life was shredded by a sudden series of sounds that belong in fantasy fiction not in real life. Abusive, they were. (I for Insolence). Also, alarming. My mind sang faintly is-this-the-real-life-is-this-just-fantasy and then the mindtrip started. I had an overpowering desire to burst out into uncontrollable laughter. The sounds were also very ridiculous. But not only did I kill the urge, I displayed a stoicism that Zeno would have approved of. That, though, was just how it was when it started. A few minutes later, insulated from any sound other than that of the machine, I sensed music; if you think of avant garde electronica as music, that is. I was picking up low shadow sounds traipsing along with the primary backed by complex polyrhythms setting patterns. Harmony and rhythm, with melody a figment of a thinly stretched imagination. Like I said, avant garde electronica. I desperately wanted to get a recorder, capture these sounds, and set them to some sort of melody. And there it would have been, my legacy, joy to the world. (M for Magnum Opus). As I lay smiling at my imagined genius, a longish silence shouted out time’s up, the song is over. I began with The Who and ended with The Who. Maybe I’ll write about existentialism next; that should fetch me a whole load of readers. The machine proceeded to push me out, whole. Clearly, this dessert was like dust to it. I did say I’m not dishy.

On my slow doddering walk back home, I thought about the fat-shaming of that machine. Surely that wicked thing can’t be upto any good! What if those sounds it spun out and I wove into my glorious composition turned it into subliminal subverse? What if I taint my masterpiece? And so I decided to let it be. Sad but true. But correct.

All of this is real. It happened and I have lived to tell the tale. I understand it if you don’t want to ever meet me. Some of you might think I need help. Nope, I don’t. I don’t like that song and The Beatles are devilspawn anyway.